


the unthankful and evil

by evenstar9



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Christian Character, Christianity, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Self-Doubt, faith - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 19:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19279888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evenstar9/pseuds/evenstar9
Summary: His faith isn’t what they think it is. It’s not a bright, shining thing that solves his problems. It’s a wrestling in the dark, a doubting and a fear and the soft tenuous thread that keeps him from the edge because he knows, he knows, that if he lets it go he’ll have nothing.





	the unthankful and evil

His faith isn’t what they think it is. It’s not a bright, shining thing that solves his problems. It’s a wrestling in the dark, a doubting and a fear and the soft tenuous thread that keeps him from the edge because he knows, he knows, that if he lets it go he’ll have nothing. He’s come close sometimes, to letting that confidence go- to letting the wisps of belief fly off into the void and falling right along with them.

He lives in darkness every day, despite the vague impressions his other senses afford, and he knows he’s only a moment from tipping into a darkness of soul as well as sight. He has one leg on either side, sometimes. Father Lantom knows this too, he thinks, and does his best, but the strength of a human hand can only help so much when falling from a heavenly height. The thread has held him so far, but he wonders if there will come a day when it snaps.

Some days he feels the darkness creeping into his stomach, cloying at his heart. He does what he can to stop its advance. He leaves a trail of sinners in his wake, bleeding and broken but unable to hurt anyone again, and pretends it’s enough. Pretends he doesn’t hear himself in their pleas and excuses, the ‘I didn’t know better’s and the ‘I’m just trying to get by’s. Pretends that he’s different, that his nightly outings aren’t just him trying to pay off his unpayable debts like everyone else.

Karen asked him if it helped, to have faith. At the time, he’d said no. That there were some things that just hurt, and the little thread wasn’t enough to hold them. No matter how tightly he clung to the fibers of his fraying faith, he felt the great height below him. It would be so easy to fall. With Fisk, he came close- closer than ever before- and he wondered what it was that stopped him. Was it his failure to follow through, to be strong enough, or was it something more- was it the thread that yanked him from the brink? He’d been angry with himself, for failing, for trying at all, but maybe, just maybe, he could be grateful for that particular failure. He didn’t want to know who he’d have become if he’d succeeded.

Murdock boys always get back up.

Until they can’t.

Until he’d fallen so hard and so fast that the wind was knocked out of him and no matter what, he couldn’t manage to get his feet under him again. It should have been easy, a normal night on the streets, but he’d taken one too many hits and he barely got away. Each blow made him angrier (at the thugs, at the world, at the Kitchen, at himself). The darkness reached his heart, like a virus. He stopped pulling his punches as he usually did, telling himself they deserved it. It didn’t make a difference.

He was tired. A fist struck his jaw, and he lost his footing. A boot landed in his ribs, and he felt a crack. He got an elbow under him, but it slipped just as quickly. He realized, with an uncommon rush of fear, that he could die here- bleeding on the ground like so many who’d come close to death at his hands. He observed apathetically that it seemed an ironic way to go.

The pain stopped, and he felt the thudding of the boots pounding away from him, and he lay in silence for several aching minutes. Sirens screamed in the distance.

It took him an hour to pick himself up, and another to go back to the apartment, to disinfect the new gashes and collapse on his couch. He’d had worse, of course, but somehow he knew something was different. He’d let go. He’d felt the thread slip through his fingers. He could still feel his stomach dropping, not from the bruises but from the weight that suddenly was loosed on him with that thread.

He’d lost his fight against the evil in his city, not because he’d failed to keep the thugs down, but because he’d lost the war in his own heart. He’d been ignoring the most important battleground all along. He’d known all along that the Devil was in him, but he’d failed to fight it, and he realized now, sprawled on his couch, horned helmet cast aside, that maybe he’d never been strong enough after all.

 

 

He went to Father Lantom in the morning, he wasn’t sure why. Sure, he had plenty to talk about if he wanted, but that was nothing new, and usually his preferred method was to wrap it inside himself and do his best to forget it. After last night, though, he decided he didn’t care anymore- if the Devil had won him he’d already lost everything anyway. He ended up sitting in a folding chair at the rickety plastic table with a latte next to him. It smelled of too-old espresso and slightly over-steamed milk, but it warmed him nonetheless. Lantom sat, stared at him for a moment, and then sighed, waiting. Matt should have known it was up to him to try for conversation.

He told the priest everything. About Fisk, about his close call, about the anger building in him and the darkness that grew inside him. The sickness that engulfed his heart and made him feel dirty and how no matter how much he punched it didn’t help. How he’d stopped holding himself back but been too tired anyway and how he almost died and how he lost, he lost to the dark. “I think- I think I’ve lost sight of God, Father,” he ended, aware of the irony of his words.

And Father Lantom had the audacity to laugh. Matt was halfway through a protest when the priest held up a hand, and Matt didn’t ask how he knew he’d sense the gesture. “Matthew. Even before you were blind, you never were very good at seeing clearly.”

Matt noted the man’s tone and decided to reserve his offense.

“Son, you aren’t dead. You should be, after last night, and so many other nights. You deserve it.”

Matthew raised an eyebrow as he felt the old fear spike inside him again.

Father Lantom’s voice softened. “But that’s the point- those men deserve death. So do you. So do I, Matthew. It’s the curse of humanity. But God, who didn’t deserve death, died.”

“I understand that, but-“ “Listen, for a change,” came the reproof for interrupting, and Matt obeyed. “You’ve been trying so hard, Matthew, to work out your own salvation. That’s not your job, regardless of how many criminals you beat up or how much you hope that that will heal the gaping wound in your soul. You’re still alive. So are they, which I thank God for. Somehow, I’m still walking the earth. None of us deserve to take another breath, but by the grace of God, we do. There’s hope, Matthew. Take your own advice: why don’t you kill them?”

“Sometimes I don’t know,” Matt muttered, and he felt the priest shake his head. He sighed. “Because... because I believe- I believed- that there was hope for them.”

Father Lantom nodded, satisfied. “Then there’s hope for you: Matthew Murdock, sinner, just like anyone else. Maybe you did lose sight of God. In that area, we’re all blind as bats. Myself not excluded, sometimes. But there’s one thing I know for sure, Matthew.” Matt waited. “You’re alive, you’re here, you’re listening. So you see? God never lost sight of you.”

 

_He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil._

**Author's Note:**

> The quotation at the end that also inspired the title is an excerpt from Luke 6:35.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at rainmakesyouwhole!


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